Making it Right
by dancingpixie
Summary: Teresa reflects on her conversation with Ryan from the episode The O. Sea. Please Read and Review! CHAPTER 2 IS UP: Ryan reflects on what could have been.
1. Default Chapter

WRITTEN BY: DancingPixie 

RATING: T (One swear word)

DISCLAIMER: I don't own the character etc etc you get the idea. Please steal don't this story.

SUMMARY: Teresa reflects on her conversation with Ryan in the O. Sea. Please Read and Review!

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Italics signify text that was from the episode and thus not written by myself.

**Making it Right**

Even through it was late at night, the air was still warm and a soft breeze made the leaves softly rustle like ghosts. It seemed like there were an infinite number of stars to been seen, all winking down at her. She and Ryan had spent countless nights sitting on her porch on evenings like this - drawing patterns in the stars, talking, teasing and making out. Only now she was sitting on her porch alone. Sipping her beer, she shook her head. Ryan. There was someone she hadn't expected to see tonight.

She had just run out the grocery store, picking up a few items for her mom, taking a breather from her own demands of motherhood. As she walked down the main drag with her brown bag, she hadn't even noticed him till he was right in front of her. Hunched over and talking on a cell phone, like she had seen him do a thousand different times on thousands of different nights. All at once her head was filled a million potential actions: drop the groceries and kiss him so hard he forgot he had ever left, drop the groceries and run...Yet she just stood there holding her bag of groceries, _"Ryan?"_

He looked up, and all she could think was: he has got another new haircut. _"Theresa?"_

She had imagined this encounter so many different times. Played out different scenarios, different ways of telling him, different ways of not telling him. She had put them years ahead meeting by accident, she had imagined phoning him up and telling him. She thought she had imagined every possible way for she and Ryan to run into each other, but never had she imagined standing in front of him with a bag of groceries, never had she imagined him looking so lost.

He walked over to her, hands in his pockets. Still stunned, "Hey" was all she could manage.

"How have you been?" they asked each other at the same time. Both of them paused, and then tried talking again at the same instant. Ryan look down and then up again. She smiled, "I was just headed back to my mom's."

He looked up at her on an angle and smiled back with that small shy smile he had, "I'll walk with you. But first let me take that bag." It was always the same, they could go for months without seeing each other and then within two sentences it was like no time had passed.

Together they turned off of the busy main street to the side streets that led to their neighbourhood, _"What are you doing back?" _

_"I am visiting my mom for the weekend. Believe it or not I miss it back here. It might not be paradise, but it is home."_ That was always the difference between them, it was never home for Ryan, and it certainly was never paradise. He had left and he hadn't missed it at all. He had left and never looked back.

_"And Atlanta?_" Of course he would ask about Atlanta, her magical ticket out. Her way of showing him that he wasn't the only who could leave.

_"It is fine...for now."_

They paused. He turned around and looked at her while walking backwards, _"You know...I wrote you all those letters."_ She knew, she had read them. But how could she write back? It clear from what he wrote that he had dived head first back into Newport.

_"I know...I needed a clean break." _

_"Or you were mad because I left."_ No, she wasn't. Sure, he had come back to Chino to help her with the baby. Sure, he had gone to every doctor's appointment. He had paid the bills and been the 'man of the house', but he hadn't done it for her. She knew he would never tell her, but she could feel how unhappy he was...and she loved him too much to watch him waste away. She wasn't mad at him, she just couldn't stand to make him so miserable. So she made him leave.

_"I wanted you to leave...you belong in Newport. Which doesn't explain what you are doing back here?" _

_"Trey."_ Ahh...the one person whose faults Ryan could be persuaded to ignore. The devil to Ryan's saint.

_"He's out of jail?"_

_"He was crashing with the Cohens for a little while and things were going good..."_

_"Let me guess, Trey got into trouble."_ She knew how this story ends before it even began.

_"He hooked up with Marissa." _She stopped walking, no wonder Ryan was looking so lost. "_He says she came on to him, she says nothing happened. I don't know who to believe..."_

_"I do. Ryan, Trey has been jerking you around your entire life and Marissa..."_

_"Has made mistakes."_ He never wrote about that in the letters. It was obvious Marissa had issues but she understood why Ryan liked her. Marissa had an innocence and a glow that seemed to make all of the shit that went on in Chino go away.

_"She would never hurt you like that." _

_"How do you know?"_

_" 'Cause last year when I needed you she let you go...even though it broke her heart. They both love you, but between the two of them, Marissa is the one you can trust." _Which was true. Trey was an ass, and even when they were little, Trey had been the weaker one. The one who would bow down to the bullies in school and join them. He always took the path of least resistance.

They walked in silence for a few more seconds, Ryan was looking at her like she was saying things he had never thought of before.

_"Ummm... this is me."_ Suddenly she and Ryan were pushed back to reality.

_"Is your mom in? I'll say hey."_ An ugly reality.

_"Yeah...but it is getting kinda late."_ Fabulous excuse. She wasn't ready. She couldn't tell him. This conversation had reinforced what she already knew, Ryan really belonged in Newport, with a family and a girlfriend who loved him.

_"Let me help you in."_

_"No, it's fine. I got it."_

_"Yeah...you sure?"_

_"Yeah."_

_"Okay."_

She wasn't going to. There was no need to. Yet Theresa had taken Ryan away from Marissa twelve months ago. Now she was making up for it, she was ensuring that Ryan stayed in his Newport life. _"Talk to Marissa, make it right."_ She was making it right, fixing what she had broken a year ago. She owed Marissa at least that.

_"Yeah, well"._ Suddenly they were at her front porch. They both paused for a moment, then gently Ryan gave her a kiss on the cheek. She gave him a half smile and wave and opened her door.

The bright lights of house brought forced her eyes to open in more then one way. Her mom stood rocking her baby, _"Somebody missed you!"_

A big grin filled her face, as hard as it was being a teen-mom her son never failed to bring a smile to her face.

_"He looks more and more like his daddy everyday."_

It was that comment that she had been replaying in her head as she sat on her porch staring up at the stars. It was true, her son did look like Ryan. They shared the same blue eyes that saw everything and even the same half smile. Finishing her beer, she rubbed her eyes. She and Ryan had tried to make it work, but hadn't worked that summer. It hadn't worked at all. She had made him leave the only way she knew how.

Growing up, she had dated lots of guys in Chino, and some of them pretty seriously. But through all of those relationships, there was always Ryan next door. Someone to share the ups and downs, someone to laugh with about the bad dates. With Ryan it had never taken any work, there was a simple, wordless understanding between them. They had never bothered to put labels on what they had, they had never even gone on an official date together. That still didn't mean that without a doubt she had been in love with Ryan Atwood since the 8th grade. But then he left. Without a word, or a note, or even a phone call. She had hoped that when he moved in, when she showed him that they could be a family, that he would be as happy with her as he had been with the Cohens. But his heart had never been in it. He just wasn't ready.

But there were moments like tonight, moments when she realized exactly how much her son was like his father that she wondered she had made the right choice. She knew that one day she would have to tell Ryan about his son, the question was how? Tonight wasn't the night, Ryan was focused on Marissa, but one night she would have to let him inside, she would have to reveal her betrayal. A betrayal worse then Trey's, worse then anything his mom ever did, worse then what he suspected Marissa of doing.

One thing she did know was what she was going to tell her son. When her son asked about his father, the man she walked home with tonight was the man she would describe. The man that asked about her first, the man that carried her groceries. The man that tried to be loyal to both his family and his girlfriend. The man that kissed her on the cheek.

The man she still loved.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: This was not what I had planed for this chapter at all...the words just sort of came out in a rush. I am still not sure if it works. Please tell me what you think!

**The Weight**

Ryan drove away from Chino more confused then when he had arrived. Trey had told him that Marissa had betrayed him, Marissa denyed everything. As he entered the highway, he drove by the sign near the prison in Chino where it read in large graffiti, "You shall be freed", showing hands breaking chains with pure force. Ryan wished that he could be freed by that sort of force. As if mere determination could make things better. The truth was that even after his discussion with Theresa, he didn't know who to believe.

Going back to Chino always made him think. It made him reflect on who he was, who he could have been, who he was going to be. He wasn't the same person now that he was when he left Chino with Sandy that July day. When the Cohen's had taken him in he had been just an another piece of white trash, headed for life of petty crime. He went out every night and partied hard with kids like himself that had long ago lost the ability to feel anything.

He treated girls differently too. You met at a party, you got drunk, you hooked up. Maybe if you liked the person you hooked up more then once. Theresa had sort of been like that. They were friends one day, and sort of randomly they started making out and then…without really thinking…he wasn't a virgin anymore. He and Theresa had never really dated, there were no words, no promises, just good sex in the back of a car, breath smelling of whiskey.

He loved her though. She was incredibly strong and caring. And she understood him. Understood what he did and why he did it. And they had almost had a baby together. If Theresa hadn't miscarried then he would have been a father right about now and he probably would have married her for the baby's sake.

The baby.

"_Theresa's pregnant. And it might not be Eddy's."_ Even almost a year latter Marissa' voice saying those 6 little words rang through his head. In less then ten seconds it felt like a millions of worries had fallen on top of him. Theresa might go back to Eddie. He might be a father. He had betrayed Marissa.

"_It's not like we haven't done this before,"_ Theresa's voice echoed in his head. Yes, but always with a condom. They had always been prepared. Always. Why hadn't he been that night?

But Theresa had made a decision before he could even process the reality of the situation. _"You're not ready for this, I'm not ready for this. I can't do this. I not going to do it. I'm not going to have it, the baby."_ Ryan would support Theresa no matter what but at the same time he still felt, _"Relieved, sad, disappointed..."_ Relieved that there wouldn't be a baby, but sad at the loss of what could have been, disappointed that he had some how failed a test, of what he wasn't sure.

And then Theresa had decided to have the baby.

"_Remember that part last night about me not having the baby?"_ Ryan knew what she was going to say before she even finished her thought that night in the pool house_, "As hard as it is to imagine having a baby, I can't really imagine not having it." _Ryan had been in some pretty tough situations in his life, he had stared down gun barrels twice, he had been in jail and entered a whole new social world but never had he been as scared as he was when Theresa told him that. Before, there had been other options, other possibilities. But now she had made up the mind. He was a father.

As she hugged him, the only thought running through his head was what his mom had said when she had come to see him at the Cohen's. _"I didn't know what I was doing when I married your dad, I was too young when I had you brother…"_ If Theresa had the baby she would go back to Chino, she would marry Eddie, convince herself that it was for the best. His child would be sentenced to that life of hell that he had grown up in.

So when Theresa had told him that she was going back for sure and said, **"**_So come with me,"_ Ryan knew he had no choice. He willingly given up his future, everything he had for the baby.

He said goodbye to everyone and Theresa had picked him up in her yellow car and driven him out of the gated community back to a reality he thought he had left behind. He had thought that he would stay in Auritro's room but Theresa had dropped his bags in hers. He held her head through the bouts of morning sickness and gone to every doctor's appointment. Within in a few days of arriving he had found a job working construction that paid pretty well, with Aurito in jail and Theresa's mom out of work he had become the sole earner. He construction pay check had to cover everything: the food, the electricity, the mortgage. In felt like within the span of a mere 40 minute drive he had become an adult. The only time he hadn't felt like he was drowning was when they had seen the baby's heartbeat for the first time on the ultra-sound.** It** became **the baby**. A real person.

Which meant that he was a real father.

Turning out of Chino, Ryan headed back into Newport. He should call Seth to find out how the meeting with George Lucas was going….

He hadn't thought about what it would be like to be a father for a long time. He used to think about it all the time, that summer it felt like he thought about it every freaking minute. He used to lay awake at night wondering about how he was going to raise a child. He used to stare at the mirror and see his reflection disappear and merge with a man that he only remembered as a monster, his father. He was scared that he was going to become his father, become the drinking, swearing, womanizing, abusive criminal that his father was. He hoped that he could be there for his baby the way his father never was for him, he hoped that by some miracle he could become the sort of man that Sandy was.

Then in an instant it was gone. He had been enjoying his visit with Seth and Luke, enjoying being a teenager again, but Ryan knew the moment that he heard Theresa's voice that something was wrong, _"They didn't find a heartbeat. I lost the baby, Ryan. I guess in the first couple months this can happen."_ He had tried to back and help her, but she hadn't wanted his help, _"You're don't want me to come home."_ Yet another woman in his life was kicking him out.

He remembered hanging up the phone in a daze and walking to the guest room of the Ward's house. Sitting on the bed, and just shaking. That heartbeat that he'd seen was gone. The baby was gone.

When Ryan wrote letters to Theresa he had also written letters to the baby. Letters explaining who he was, who Theresa was. Letters that voiced the love that Ryan had for the baby, that son or daughter that he would never know, that never got the chance to be known. He was glad that he had got a second chance, but parts of him still wondered what could have been.

Seeing Theresa tonight had been the final step to lifting that weight that he had carried around that whole summer. He need to let himself know that she didn't think that he had abandoned her. That she didn't resent him going back to Newport.

She had asked told him to make things right with Marrissa. Taking a deep breath Ryan pulled off of the road and into the school parking lot. It was like he had driven here on instinct, like his body had known what was right even when his mind wasn't sure. Just like he had to leave Newport to help Theresa, he had to believe Marissa tonight. And what the future would hold? Well if that summer had taught him anything it was that sometimes you had to play with the cards that life deals you and just let the future come.


End file.
